'We'll ask Aunt Phoebe; she's sure to know a legislator on the right side of the issue, and she'll persuade him to adopt you.'
'Speaking of your aunt Phoebe, shouldn't we get back to the house?'
'You want to go back to the house?' I said. 'We'll be cooped up with my family soon enough when the hurricane actually hits. Do you really want to get a head start?'
'Well, it is warm and dry there,' Michael said, pulling up the hood of his parka.
'It's warm and dry in the house,' I said. 'But right now I doubt if they'd let us stay inside.'
'Why on earth not?'
'Look around you,' I said. 'What do you see?'
'Birders,' he said automatically.
'Aside from the birders.'
Just then, Fred Dickerman drove by at his usual breakneck speed. We leapt into some bushes by the side of the road while a flock of lady birders squawked and scattered like geese before his honking horn.
'The natives are getting hostile?' he asked.
'The natives are busy.' I pointed out the half a dozen locals boarding or taping their windows, trudging back from the grocery stores with bags and boxes of supplies, and frantically trying to tie down or carry indoors every object smaller than a Volkswagen.
'With the exception of that crowd of old-timers killing time in the general store, you're right.'
'If we go home now, Aunt Phoebe will find half a hundred chores for us to do, most of them outdoors,' I said.
'And those same chores won't be waiting for us when we get back?'
'With any luck, she'll manage to get Dad and Rob to do quite a few of them while we're gone.'
'So what should we do?' Michael asked. 'I'll tell you straight out--I'm not up for another hike around the island, even if it wasn't infested with armed lunatics.'
'We're going shopping,' I said. 'Monhegan has a few artists' studios and craft shops. You're not going to go back to Yorktown without a present for your mom, are you?'
'Now that's a good idea,' Michael said.
We spent the next hour inspecting the remarkable number and variety of closed for the season signs in the windows of the island shops and studios. Some of them were genuine works of art in their own right, but I wasn't having a lot of fun viewing them on water-soaked, locked doors or through rain-splattered windowpanes while my feet remained firmly planted in the mud.
At one point, we actually saw Victor Resnick stalking down the street in a disreputable mackinaw that made him look more like a scarecrow than ever. We ducked behind a building until he'd passed.
'He doesn't have his gun,' Michael reported, peering around the corner. 'If I were the constable, I'd tackle him now.'
'I wouldn't count on it, though,' I said, getting up the nerve to poke my head out.
Resnick stood in front of the general store, talking to someone--a young Asian man.
'Who do you suppose that is?' Michael said. 'Doesn't have binoculars, so I doubt he's a birder.'
'Definitely not a birder,' I said. 'He's wearing a necktie underneath his raincoat.'
'The men at the general store did say something about Resnick having ties with foreign lobstering interests,' Michael said. 'Maybe he's from some Japanese seafood conglomerate.'
'That's possible,' I said. 'Although around here, the word
Resnick's discussion with the corporate man had grown heated. They stood nose-to-nose, both talking and gesturing furiously. Resnick's complexion grew redder and redder, and he shook his finger in the Asian man's face. Obviously, our visitor from the East hadn't heard about Resnick's readiness with firearms; he gave back as good as he got. A pity the wind, rain, and surf kept us from hearing what they said. Well, if the argument turned violent, we'd have plenty of witnesses, I realized. I could see at least three other people hiding behind nearby buildings, although I had no idea whether they wanted to avoid Resnick or eavesdrop on his conversation.
Suddenly, Resnick whirled and began striding down the street the way he'd come--toward us.
Chapter 8
'Oh my God, he's coming this way,' I whispered. We both jerked back, but not so far that we couldn't see what went on.
'You can go to hell for all I care!' Resnick shouted over his shoulder.
The Asian man opened his mouth as if to reply, then stopped, took a deep breath, and shoved his hands in the pockets of his raincoat. He stood there for a few moments, staring after Resnick, then turned on his heels and began walking in the other direction.
About then, Michael and I scurried around the corner of the building to avoid Resnick. When we peeked out a minute or two later, both he and the Asian man with the necktie had disappeared.
After that brief flurry of excitement, we resumed our shopping quest and finally ended up down by the ferry dock in the only gift shop still open--probably because it doubled as the island-side office for the ferries.
We flung open the shop door, shook ourselves like large dogs, and said good morning to the shopkeeper and her one other customer. The shopkeeper was a stout sixtyish woman, sensibly dressed in boots, jeans, and several layers of sweaters. I couldn't remember her name--probably a subconscious form of revenge, since during my last visit to Monhegan I'd tried, without success, to get her to sell my ironwork in her shop.
The other occupant was a rather odd-looking woman in her forties, dressed in a peculiar multilayered medley of black, purple, and violet, topped with a limp lavender-trimmed straw hat. Not one of the birders, obviously; probably an artist or craftswoman.
'My God,' Michael said, looking round. 'Is the puffin the state bird here or something?'
He had a point; the shop was a puffin lover's paradise. Puffin posters, puffin T-shirts, puffin sweatshirts, puffin key chains, and so many stuffed toy puffins of all sizes that the place looked like Santa's workshop on December 23.
'We're very proud of our puffins,' said the shopkeeper. 'Maine is the only state in the union that actually has nesting puffins.'
'Yes, so Meg's aunt Phoebe has told us,' Michael said, breaking in to stem the tide of puffin lore.
'Oh, you're Meg?' the shopkeeper said. 'I didn't recognize you; it's such a long time since you've been here. Your father's told us about all your detective adventures this summer.'
I winced. I should have known that my mystery-buff dad couldn't spend five minutes anywhere without bragging about his daughter, who had actually solved a real live murder. Listening to Dad, you'd think any minute I'd quit my career as a smith and open up a detective agency.
'You know, we never did finish those arrangements for selling some of your ironwork here in the shop,' the woman went on.
I snapped to attention. A more accurate statement would be that I'd never convinced her my occasional summers on the island constituted enough of a local tie to warrant my inclusion in the 'Crafts of Monhegan' section of the shop. But if my past summer's adventures had made me notorious enough to interest her, thus opening up a profitable new market--well, I wasn't about to let the opportunity go to waste.
In minutes, the shopkeeper and I were deep in discussions of the quantity and type of merchandise she thought she could use and whether she would buy them outright or take them on consignment Michael wandered off to inspect the puffin paraphernalia, and after a few minutes, the woman in lavender picked up her purse.
'Bye, Mamie' she whispered, and slipped out of the store.
'Oh, I'm sorry,' I said. 'I didn't mean to drive a customer away.'
'Oh, she's not a customer,' Mamie said. 'That's one of our other island celebrities. That's Rhapsody.' From the tone of voice, I suspected Rhapsody was one of those people who strenuously resisted admitting that they owned a last name. And that she was somebody I ought to have heard of.
